It is necessary and desirable for persons working or engaging in other activities within a high noise-level environment to wear hearing protectors, such as dual earcup headsets, in order to protect their physiological hearing systems against damage from the high intensity sound. Sometimes earplugs are used rather than earcups. Sometimes, for greater attenuation, earcups are used over earplugs. Such high noise-level environments include locations near jet aircraft, target practice shooting ranges, noisy industrial plants, and the like. Various types of hearing protectors of this type have been previously proposed, such as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,064,362 to D. R. Williams, but these prior-proposed designs have relatively limited utility since they are monaural in nature. Thus, some of the proposed prior devices may provide automatic attenuation of high-volume sound waves but do not provide directional perception of different nearby sound sources. Also, some of the prior hearing protective devices may have caused distortion effects, such as changes in wave shape, making the attenuated sound unnatural and unpleasant to the hearer. At least one prior device does not cut down the electronic output when the sound is too loud but only prevents it from increasing beyond a limiting level. Another disadvantage of the prior proposed devices is proneness to being left switched on when removed from the head after a period of use, causing unnecessary battery drain, and frequently making the device unusable until the batteries have been replaced.
Thus, there is a need for a hearing protective device which provides adequate directional perception, which causes minimum wave distortion, which is automatically deenergized when taken off, and which is comfortable to wear.